Protect Your Child Online

Several federal court cases have changed the original intention of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).  Originally enacted in 1984, CFAA passed amendments in 1994, 1996, and 2001.  The evolution of CFAA is credited to the PATRIOT Act and Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act, which enacted stiffer penalties concerning Computer Fraud, including criminal offense for conspiring to commit computer hacking.

CFAA Has a Large Span

Federal court cases have tried to leverage this act to prosecute former employees who have deleted relevant information belonging to their place of employment on their laptop upon termination.  In the case of Larry Mendte, a former Philadelphia anchor for Access Hollywood was prosecuted with six months house arrest and two and a half years probation for viewing private emails of his co-anchor in 2008; thanks to CFAA.

Lori Drew v. United States

Perhaps, the most provocative case in history is that of Lori Drew v. United States.  A deranged mother from O’Fallon, Missouri that was over involved in her child’s social life posed as a boy named “Josh” in order to lure 13-year-old Megan Meier on MySpace.  Megan Meier committed suicide with the encouragement of “Josh” in an act of desperation based on a fictitious cyber relationship.  Missouri court refused to take this on because they didn’t have the legislation in place for prosecution, so it was left in the hands of the Supreme Court.

Preventing Cyberbullying 

The charges were dropped on July 2, 2009 because there was no known law that properly addressed cyberbullying.  The Federal Courts tried it with CFAA, but it was a long stretch.  Does this mean that it is up to us to protect our children online?  Do we have to become our own private investigator in order to make sure that mentally deficient parents such as Lori Drew don’t commit tortuous acts?

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 11th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Protecting Your Child Online . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.